About 15 years ago, I received a little potted Araucaria heterophylla tree as a Christmas gift. Many repottings and several moves later, it now stands about 15 feet tall and has outgrown my tiny house.

Just as we make jokes about unreliable cars, we make jokes about the Toyota pickup's reliability. My brother-in-law's '88 has close to a quarter-million miles and it has yet to suffer any significant mechanical problem.